Why you shouldn’t pre-order an Oculus Rift

In roughly six weeks, Oculus will finally launch the Oculus Rift. Interest in the Rift has been high ever since its Kickstarter three years ago, and the company’s hardware can deliver a thrilling experience unlike anything conventional monitors can offer. The VR demos and games I’ve seen have been amazing.

I honestly think that VR could revolutionize gaming. But I can’t recommend anyone pre-order an Oculus Rift or purchase one of the system bundles we covered yesterday. There are three principle reasons why.

The Rift is an unproven platform

The first reason to avoid the Rift is common to virtually all first-generation products. Bugs and problems in either hardware design or software support are common at this stage, particularly when the company has no previous experience in shipping consumer hardware.

I’m not claiming Palmer Luckey intends to ship a box of broken parts, or that Oculus’ various launch partners don’t take the situation seriously. But making VR work requires deep integration between hardware and software.

It’s hard to show people what VR looks like from inside VR itself.

Palmer Luckey may have the best of intentions, but he’s an unreliable voice for the state of his product. After months of dodging and weaving on price, he unveiled an Oculus Rift that cost $600, a far cry from earlier statements that claimed it would be around $350. More recently, Luckey claimed that Oculus had shipped 200,000 Rift developer kits (DK2), and that this was “nothing compared to what we will be doing this year.”

“I believe that it would be extremely unlikely that Oculus would ship more than 100,000 to 200,000 Rift headsets this year. I believe that Palmer’s statements are more of his wishes and hope than the reality of the current situation, similar to what we saw with pricing of the Rift,” Sag told Tweaktown.

We have no idea how the hardware performs

This might seem surprising, since journalists have been writing about VR for years. I’ve seen multiple demos on both AMD and Nvidia hardware, and I’ve had multiple play sessions with the technology.

I’ve never seen anything in VR recently that was less than good, and I’ve had several experiences I’d classify as “Amazing,” but consider the circumstances. In each case, I (and my journalism peers) were testing VR on an absolutely top-end PC, either powered by dual GPUs or by a single, ultra-high-end card. The demos were always small content snips: one level, one area, one map.

Clarification: AMD has used multi-GPU configurations to demonstrate how LiquidVR can dedicate one GPU to each eye. Mainstream support for multi-GPU rendering is still in early stages. The paragraph above was re-worded to reflect this.

Oculus has promised to prioritize an excellent experience, but the company’s decision to set the GTX 970 as the baseline GPU is concerning. The GTX 970 is an excellent graphics card for 1080p, but it isn’t a true 4GB card. Its memory configuration is best described as 3.5GB+512MB and its performance can be erratic at maximum detail levels and high resolution.

The GTX 970’s frame times can spike far above the GTX 980 in certain scenarios. Image by PC Perspective.

This was never a problem at 1080p, but the Rift pushes 25% more pixels and most VR games are supposedly targeting a 90 FPS window. The additional pixels may not be a problem, but the keeping the rate of delivery perfectly smooth could be more difficult on the GTX 970 due to its memory configuration.

Again, I’m not saying this is a problem, but we don’t know yet. The best thing to do is wait and see.

Better GPUs are coming

The final reason to hold off on buying a Rift is that we already know better graphics cards are coming this year. AMD has announced it will ship its 14nm Polaris by the middle of the year; Nvidia will likely give an update on Pascal at GDC in roughly a month.

We don’t know anything about how the two companies will stack up against each other, but you can bet that next-generation hardware will outperform current designs. Given that the Rift costs $600 and the bundles Oculus is promoting start at $1,500, it’s not worth it to buy a Rift + GPU today, just to see those cards outclassed within months.

If you recently upgraded to a high-end GPU, it still makes sense to wait and see how the platform performs before committing to a $600 purchase. If you haven’t pulled the trigger on that purchase, wait a little longer — you’ll get more bang for your buck.

It’s possible that both the Rift and its software will perform beautifully from day one and that the GTX 970 will be a perfect Rift solution. Even if both of these things happen, newer, better GPUs are still coming in less than a year. Given the benefits of 14nm over older 28nm process nodes, it makes far more sense to wait than to pull the trigger now.

Tagged In

In essence I agree. But if you’re just waiting for better graphics you might as well preorder now since it will take far into second half of 2016 before they will be ready to ship. I preordered on the day after they opened for it and got note of my shipment around summer time. To me this is a question of what I want most out of 2016 and VR has been on the very top of my list since the 90’s!

Ray Delien

I disagree with a lot of this. The rift CV1 is now the 5th iteration of the device. There were two prototypes two developers kits, and now the consumer version. If anyone knows how to make a VR HMD it is oculus. Also graphics cards are upgradeable. If you just bought a 970 or 980 congratulations, you will be able to run anything released in the next 1-2 years with no problem. If you have not, then you may be at a disadvantage until the new cards come out, but as long as you have anything above a 670 you should be able to take part in some, but not all of the 200 VR experiences that have been being used and enjoyed by DK1 and DK2 owners for years now.

Jon_Irenicus

The gpus may be upgradeable, but why pay full price for those gpus when you know they will be obsolete in months? What is the rush? The rift won’t be out until the gpus are out anyway, so why not just wait until both the rift AND new gpus are out?

jack324

Those bundles are for the people who are too afraid to crack open their pc and tinker. That kind of person either buys a console or a prefab pc with subpar parts and never thinks twice.

While I feel they are too expensive, if someone is foolish enough to buy one without looking into other options first then the blame falls squarely on the buyer.

It’s not a great practice, but its a smart practice. Make an all in one package for the idiots with $1500+ to spend and they will buy it.

Keith Ian

I hate narcissistic comments where someone thinks they have the right to be insulting just because they can do something others may not feel comfortable doing or prefer the support offered by purchasing from a dealer. When you make comments like this, you actually are the one that sounds like an idiot.

DontGetMeStarted

To be honest, I used to be the buy the 1200 PC and call i t a day. I watched a few youtube videos and building one saves a ton of money and It’s actually fun. But I have to agree with Jack to an extent. You can’t complain about $1500 Prebuilt PC when you could build the same one for $875. It is either about price or it isn’t it can’t be both.

FloridaOJ

He didn’t say anything insulting… Economics say that “person willing to spend more money for something that can be purchased for less elsewhere” = idiot = typical consumer

RunningWriting

Or you could say that a person is willing to spend more money so that he/she doesn’t have to spend the time and effort on learning how to assemble computers (and spend time on researching the components markets). That doesn’t make the person an “idiot.” It means that many people value their time and they don’t prioritize high-end “bleeding edge” gaming and PCs.

FloridaOJ

I stand corrected. Sometimes its easy to forget those basic business schools principles of Opportunity Cost in Time.

Rob Xsiq

Its always the best practice to find someone very knowledgable about building a gaming computer and hiring the for a hundred or two dollars to build you a screaming computer hand made for (insert price here). they will do it either very under budget, or will use every penny you give them to make a beast.
lots of mom and pop computer stores offer this also (just avoid the ones trying to sell off their own crappy prebuild systems unless they made them in house for gamers using the best parts)

djnforce9

This sounds fairly insulting to me: “Make an all in one package for the idiots with $1500+ to spend and they will buy it.”

While building your own rig will result in a better machine for what you pay, not everyone wants to do so; some prefer to go with a pre-built PC and leave it at that. It doesn’t make them an “idiot”; it’s just personal preference. Fortunately there are companies that do sell pre-built gaming rigs and even do the overclocking for you.

DSky1

No that’s not what economics says.

jack324

I feel you must have bought an overly expensive PC recently. Otherwise I don’t see a reason to find my comment insulting.

seth noto

When you buy the Oculus and PC bundle you are saveing a 100 dollars off the Oculus which lucky pulmer said has no mark up value added and is pure hardware costs at 600 dollars AMD is selling you there 950 dollar monitor for 900 when you buy the Oculus bundle.

So you guys are just wasting your time and place in line for the Oculus Rift. The whole world wants this divice! Get in line!

Ray Delien

You are correct, i got my 980’s back in November. I will not upgrade again until I am unable to get desired framerates in the games that I want to play.

badsleepwalker86

Do you know what year it is? The 9 series was released 1.5 years ago now almost.The 670 is almost 4 years old. You may be able to “run” games for two more years with a 970 but high settings ; no. Even the quantum break game is asking for a 980ti recommended, as the next card released this year will likely be the card to “max the game”. Brings back the good memories of taking 2-years to get cards to max crysis with AA and get a stable frame rate.

Roger Wilco

it was that lag between what a game was capable of and what a card was capable of that made developers scale back GFX requirements in games for so many years. Which is why we are only noticeably surpassing Crysis (2007)’s graphics in a major way around now.

Badelhas

Totally agree with Crysis beeing the last jaw-dropping game in terms of graphics. But I blame consoles.

DontGetMeStarted

For Ultra Settings Yes a 980TI is needed. But those graphics are even better than today’s consoles. So it all depends on what you are trying to get. Are you trying to run ultra 4k? or just 1080P. Those questions do matter and aren’t for everyone .

badsleepwalker86

I think this reply I put up was ment for someone saying they expected totally for their cards to keep working without expecting to upgrade a year or two down the line.

NeoHelios

Maybe if programmers would optimize their textures & polycounts better, the hardware catch-up game wouldn’t be as relevant. I like my 970, and plan to use it for several years to come. If game developers refuse to code for anything less than a GPU with a two year lifespan, welp, there’s ALOT of other games out there… Not so many GPUs.

badsleepwalker86

Texture size and polycount limits are for consoles… The higher resolution textures that grow in size with higher fidelity and more effects mean you will always need more and more horsepower/bandwidth/ memory for the newest games. That’s why if you have a 970 or 980, two years from now you’ll be running the games on medium. With vr that jump is going to be further as they try to increase the immersion and realism in those games.

NeoHelios

Totally agree about improving fidelity in games (platform not-with-standing), but I’m not trying to make an argument about PCMR, here.

Example: I can buy an offroading truck with full 4×4 suspension to mask the jarring ride of driving over potholes; my point is, the potholes shouldn’t have been there in the first place. There is a difference between high fidelity and lazy code, and my comment was to underline that I am not going to waste my money on high end GPUs that offset how obviously poor the code is written.

Think about the Just Cause 3 performance for AMD owners, as opposed to Geforce. The AMD team should have been MUCH better at their job than the GF team with optimizing frame rates. Applying the angle you are suggesting, if Just Cause 3 were the only game in the world, every single AMD owner should have thrown their cards in the trash, and ran out to buy some Geforce card.

This is about holding the industry accountable for quality in their products. The only way I can do that as a consumer, is to vote with my money, so to speak. That’s all I was trying to get at.

philb

Top it off Palmer never led anyone to thinking it was going to cost 350. In fact the months leading up to the release he said it was going to cost more. He did not say it was going to cost 600 but he never said 350. They even said that the new optics cost more. The bigger question should you wait is over HTC Vive. No one knows how much it will cost and if it falls into a similar price range.

mahmoud deria

Your absolutly right! There are better reasons as to why not to preorder the oculus now vs the htc vive or psvr. Honestly though the biggest reason i believe is psvr bc sony has introduced an amazing line up of exvulsive vr games for it that people need to look at seriously bc they look awesome. Also im hearing that the psvr is being unbundled so the unit will be considerably less expensive for consumers than oculus or htc vive.

Brandon Daniel

PSVR is still going to cost like $300-400 and at that price point PC gamers like myself would rather have VR on PC than pick up PS4 since we already have the the PC hardware.

Also, many of the games Sony has shown in their lineup vids are also on PC. There are some they aren’t demoing or showing in their PSVR vids that are exclusive, but there are also many good games coming out to exclusive to PC VR.

You’ll also see a lot of games pprted between console and PC just to increase the potential developer market reach.

Badelhas

If the PS4 dosent even have the power to properly display 30Fps @1080p in some of their games how do you think the VR graphics will be? Terrible, in my opinion.

mahmoud deria

The PSVR will come with a seperate power graphic unit to work with the more intense VR games. Sony hasnt released anything relevant at this point but honestly Oculus is taking a big risk coming out into the market b4 PSVR against Sony’s strong market share & game developer connections it’ll be hard to match. Ive never been a fan of PS but even i can see that Oculus is in big trouble if they dont start advertising their VR games line up better so the subject moves away from product cost, availability to people drooling over their product

Badelhas

I’ve read about that external unit. It wont have that much power at all. Don’t even compare it to a proper current decent pc

mahmoud deria

At this point all the VR headsets other than Oculus are virtually hush hush( u see what i did there?) Nothing substantial is known regarding price or capabilities so im basically muted in my responses. Trust me im no Sony fan boy but im gonna be prudent and look at all my options when im given all the information. U should do the same. My PC is a beast so im set for the Oculus as im already on the waiting list but im also waiting to hear what the other guys have to offer.

Jon_Irenicus

The bundles are the biggest rip off on the list, it’s literally the worst possible inflection point at which to drop 1500 dollars on a system using gpus from 2013-2014, on process node that is 5 years old now.

It’s actually inconceivable that any sane person would choose to buy one of those systems vs just waiting 4-6 more months and getting a massive upgrade. Even more pity should be piled onto those who go with the 970 maxwell, that shaky performance on context switching… for vr? And they are REALLY putting that card forward?

The scale of mistimed and ill considered configurations is so immense they should be pulled down from the sites doing the pre orders.

Taylor Stoll

The 970 and 980 launched at the very end of 2014 and i would say are more suitably classified as a 2015 card…. and the 28nm process being around since 2011 is irellivent. … if the card (a GTX980Ti which uses the 28nm process…) is powerful enough, it’s powerful enough. You are taling pure nonsense.

Jon_Irenicus

It’s not powerful enough when you look at the target framerates the gpus need to hit. Couple that with the next cards coming in several months essentially DOUBLING the transistor density and it is the most foolish thing in the world to spend good money on any of those cards now. You might have a case getting a 390/970 to tide you over, but not as the standard bearer to usher you into the vr age. And anything higher is wasting money. Anyone buying a 980ti right now is literally lighting cash on fire. Which is fine, at least their stupidity produces a lovely light show.

mahmoud deria

You talk about gpu cards & comparing them with each other but they cannot bc of one good reason…COST!. its a simple thing but these cards are considerably more expensive the higher you go. Most of the higher end cards cost more than than rift so most consumers wouldnt even consider dropping that kind of cash for only a GPU! & your honestly bringing up new gpu cards like their gonna be cheap? Who has the money to drop 1K on something frivilous… not the everyday consumer i’ll tell you that much

Roger Wilco

you should also take into account that DX12 is supposed to have major framerate savings which will boost the lifetime of 970’s and friends once developers start using it – which so far seems to be er, never

Taylor Stoll

I run dual GTX980’s and in all but the most graphically intensive games (that support SLI!) I can run 4K@60fps. Fallout 4, Shadow of Mordor, Project Cars, The Crew, Assetto Corsa, Metal Gear Solid GZ & PP, Dragons Dogma, Dying Light, Thief, Tomb Raider (2013), Mad Max, Dirt Rally, Final Fantasy XIII, XIII-2 and Lightning Returns and Far Cry 4 all run 4K@60fps with maximum settings. There are more recent games as well that i just can’t remember ar the moment but still… that’s a decent list. Games like Assassins Creed Unity, Batman Arkham Knight (no SLI), Lords of the Fallen, F1 2015 (no SLI) all run around 40-50 fps but can hit 60fps if you liwer certain settings. Anyway i run my cards at 1536MHz core and 8000MHz memory with 16GB DDR3 @ 2400MHz and an i74790k @ 4.8GHz so my overall system is quite beefy (and water cooled). So in my experience more games run at 4K@60fps then do not and PASCAL is only goung to be faster (looks like 300% faster then my singke GTX980… GTX980Ti is already 50% faster then my single GTX980 and PASCAL looks like it could be 2x faster then a 980Ti! So hopefully i can rn a single GP100 and be good. Anyway the facts here are just that…. the facts.

jack324

Your argument is based off of the idea that all first gen hardware has bugs, which is sorta true, but not true of the whole picture.

I am a firm believer in not pre-ordering games, since its easy to find your self with a price of crap you can’t return that way, but hardware is a different story. Warranties are involved, certain consumer protection laws that don’t apply to software, etc etc.

Another point is that Oculas has shipped product to consumers already. Yes these where development kits, but that has allowed them to get the practice and experience in for when they ship the real deal.

Will there be a bug or two? Probably, but I bet it will be in the software end of thing. They’ve had to much time building shippable versions to make any fatal hardware mistakes, and I doubt we’ll see any truly annoying hardware bugs at this stage of the game.

Joel Hruska

My argument is not based solely on the idea that the platform will have bugs. I give three distinct reasons to wait and see.

1). Hardware bugs.
2). Unknown performance on most current hardware (I’ve never used 2015 VR on anything less than a Fury X or a GTX 980 Ti — and typically it was *two* Fury X’s or 980 Ti’s).

3). New GPUs coming very soon.

Those are distinct reasons to wait-and-see.

http://vr-systems.co.uk/ WormSlayer

Actually it’s very unlikely that you have used *any* demos with dual graphics cards, there is just no support for SLI or Crossfire yet. And any game wanting to be sold in the Oculus store absolutely has to meet the recommended hardware minimum requirement of a single Geforce 970.

New GPU’s are always coming, but if you you want to get into VR before the next round ships, you are going to have to buy something that actually exists.

I have seen multi-GPU systems used for demoing VR. I have also seen single-GPU systems. I can’t honestly tell you whether every multi-GPU system was powering VR with both cards or using one for VR and one for monitor output, but true multi-GPU VR has been demo’ed. AMD has been showing LiquidVR with per-eye rendering.

I have *also* seen single-GPU VR, to be sure. I’m not claiming that the only VR that’s out there is the dual-GPU variant.

As for “must meet the minimum requirement,” until we see shipping software and performance, there’s no guarantee how that minimum requirement translates into gaming.

Some video games give recommended and minimum requirements that really work well. Some games give recommended and minimum requirements that are terribly calibrated. The only way to know which is which is to wait and see what the hardware delivers and how it performs.

Badelhas

I completly agree with your article and your statements but in my opinion you should refer a 4th reason: HTC Vive.
I never pre-order something but I am very eager to read the first reviews. Will ExtremeTech be doing a proper review of the HTC Vive?

Cheers

Joel Hruska

I honestly do not know. It depends on sampling. Certainly I’d like to.

Stephen Mullin

Oculus will not have any Hardware Bugs, they have already supplied consumers with DK1 & DK2 and I haven’t heard any complaints. GTX 980 is more than adequate (I’ve had a great experience with DK2 on a GTX 780). Why wait, if it works now, GO BUY IT if you want to :)

jack324

This. It does not have to be perfect, it just has to work.

jack324

Maybe I’m missing the point, but unless this thing flops badly, development on VR for Rift will continue indefinitely. In this situation, I don’t see how Pre-ordering and getting the system early is going to make a difference. If the hardware isn’t up to snuff for anything amazing right now, it will be shortly. Pre-ordering the Rift now isn’t going to make any difference if you know that you will enjoy VR. It just means you get to enjoy the OK stuff now while everyone waits for the amazing hardware to come out later.

All of this is based off the idea that VR has to be amazing from day one. In reality it only needs to be functional without giving you a headache or making you motion sick.

I for one am not pre-ordering a Rift. But thats becuase I’m an adult and I have adult things that require that $600 first. If I had the cash, I would have bought the dk2 and have pre-ordered the consumer version. My hardware may not be up to snuff, but we have scalable graphics settings for a reason. If I can’t find a usable setting on my current rig, then yeah I’ll have a problem and would regret pre-ordering. But I don’t think that will be the case for 50% of the gamers that built their own rig on last year’s parts like I did.

John Austin

I would tend to agree with you on all 3 points, Joel. If anyone’s still on the fence about buying a Rift at this point, they should seriously consider the risks you’ve outlined before investing in the technology.

As for me, the purchase was a no-brainer. Normally I’m not a gambler and I can be pretty stingy with my money. I tend to avoid anything 1st-gen like the plague: however; for the Rift I made an exception…

> 1). Hardware bugs.

True the hardware for the CV1 is brand new and custom crafted (for the headset mostly) but it’s design is based on generations of previous headsets. I think Oculus has had enough time to work out most of the problems associated with the hardware and the drivers. I certainly wouldn’t expect the system or any of the games/apps currently available to be flawless though.

> 2). Unknown performance on most current hardware…

Another good point. After running the checker and finding that my system was sub-par, I built a new one which meets or exceeds their recommendations. My old system is about 5 years old so I felt it was time anyway. The checker indicates that all of my hardware should be compatible but there’s still no way for me to be absolutely sure I won’t run in to any problems.

> 3). New GPUs coming very soon.

This is the dilemma that all PC gamers face. There’s always better hardware just around the corner. I decided to go with their minimum recommendation and bought an MSI GTX 970 – just couldn’t see spending double on a 980ti. Hopefully by the time there are titles that need more power than what I have, the required card will be more affordable. Then I’ll just throw the 970 into my old rig.

Another reason for my decision was that I wanted to be able to say that I was one of the first people to actually own the device that started it all; to be one of the early pioneers of something that I predict will radically change human society in the next few years and beyond.

NeoHelios

I wonder how long it will take to get display-specific technology such as G-sync implemented. Very interesting times ahead! :)

philnolan3d

Do you -really- want to support facebook?

http://www.sirgcal.com/ SirGCal

No I do not. But the @#$%ers bought the Rift which is something I do want so… pick your poison I guess… ?

jack324

Behind every awesome thing you buy is some cooperation or CEO with some shady crap in their past. Just because Facebook is ultimately the recipient of your cash when you buy a Rift does not change the fact that your getting what you wanted. The Rift may not even exist now if Facebook hadn’t bought Oculas and started pumping funding into the project.

By the way I also dislike Facebook greatly, but unfortunately it looks like they’re gonna be here for the foreseeable future.

philnolan3d

They can be here, doesn’t mean I want them to have my money.

http://www.sirgcal.com/ SirGCal

I agree with Ray.

In the end, if you want to be an early adopter, like me, go for it. Otherwise wait to see what else happens, etc. Who get’s cheaper… Who get’s better… Bla, bla, bla… That’s all “Owning Electronics 101” stuff…

However, I won’t be getting any ‘bundle’. My system right now is far more capable then any bundle I’ve seen. I just need the rift.

Phobos

It might take a while to catch up but on the run if they don’t push it at an affordable price it’s going to fade or more likely will end up as a novelty.

LaunchShipCaptain

VR will probably fail like 3D glasses

JordanViray

“The Rift is an unproven platform”

You make it sound like typical Kickstarter vaporware. They’ve had working prototypes for years that have been pretty simple (at least for any ExtremeTech reader) to setup. It’s early days and maybe us Oculus pre-order people are hopping on the HD-DVD equivalent, but if Rift works with the games we play (in my case, Minecraft, ARK, Killing Floor 2, Dirt: Rally) then why wouldn’t I upgrade to VR?

You said it yourself, “I’ve never seen anything in VR recently that was less than good”. If you have good hardware, the experience is going to be good. The 970 might be anemic; 3.5GB is certainly not sufficient for ultra textures in many games but should be plenty for high. Not defending the 970 or Nvidia’s odd memory configuration here but I’d argue that the VR decreases the relative importance of eye candy. That is, a lot of less graphically intensive games become compelling experiences in VR that would not otherwise have been on a screen (The Solar System tour demo).

And let’s not forget that lowballing minimum system requirements is basically a given in the computing industry.

“Better GPUs are coming”

And if Nvidia introduces Pascal the same way it did Maxwell, the top end card relevant for VR will be released well over a year from now. That’s a long time.

Joel Hruska

If the Rift were Kickstarter vaporware, I’d have said “The Rift is Kickstarter vaporware.”

When Apple launched the iPhone, it was an unproven platform. Today, it’s an enormous success. I would not have recommended pre-ordering an iPhone in 2007 .

When IBM launched the IBM PC, it was an unproven platform. It went on to drive an entire computing revolution. I would not have recommended pre-ordering an IBM PC.

I recommend people wait-and-see how the product performs in the wild because there are a great many unanswered questions that should be confirmed before pulling the trigger on a $600 – $1500 purchase. That’s not an unreasonable position.

JordanViray

Wait and see is reasonable for any new technology. But Rift is definitely more “proven” than the iPhone or the IBM PC were at introduction as it is an evolution of DK1 and DK2 which have been, and are, working technologies. The ecosystem isn’t mature, but there’s already plenty of existing support for Rift.

I’m very sure that Rift isn’t going to be a simple out of the box experience for most buyers so whether someone should or “shouldn’t pre-order an Oculus Rift” has to do with expectations. Tinkering is inevitable and if users are uncomfortable with that, they should wait.

“Things to consider before buying a CV1” would have been a better angle to take. VR, even with DK2, is a quantum leap in immersion over a plain monitor; a leap comparable to Wolf3D over Commander Keen. Many computers at the time could not run Wolfenstein fluently, but I don’t think people held that against the game.

Joel Hruska

Wolfenstein didn’t cost $600 — $930 if you need the new GPU.

I don’t think anyone wrote articles about just Wolfenstein, no. But articles about whether or not you *need* a high-end PC for basic office work? Certainly.

I think I could make a case that the upgrade costs for the Rift could easily match the upgrade question the owner of a modest computer faced when considering whether or not to buy a higher-end system (and what they might use it for). A purchase this large should have some data behind it.

JordanViray

The cost of Wolfenstein was basically a new computer (much more than $930) if your current one couldn’t run it well. When I bought Doom, it was incredible but it ran poorly on my friend’s 386.

$600 is not trivial, but it’s about the price of a typical 4K monitor. As for data for upgrading, I think we can estimate the needed horsepower from its specifications (basically 90fps @ 2160×1200) and how current games fare with DK2. Rift isn’t appearing out of nowhere.

Let’s not forget that anyone reading your article and deciding to pre-order will get their Rift in July at the earliest, several months after others will have received and reviewed theirs. Oculus charges on shipping so there’s little risk in placing a pre-order now.

John Miller

You hit the nail on the head sir. Graphics in VR are amazing with grand theft auto I’ve played it a lot but i can get a better VR gaming experince from soemthing like woodlands. Less graphics intense but more immersive

hmm

“…typically powered by dual GPUs.”

By ‘typical’, you of course mean ‘basically never’.

SLI/xfire VR support by the IHVs is new and none of the major VR enabled game engines have even rolled out support yet, so the only demos you could have tried that supported dual GPUs were the few hand-rolled VR SLI/xfire demos that had direct assistance by the respective IHVs. All the noteworthy VR demos, games, or adapted/modded games that are used to promote VR right now are using single GPUs.

Joel Hruska

I have reworded that paragraph to clarify it.

I have seen multiple GPU demos that were driven *by* multi-GPU’s. I’ve also seen those that weren’t. Yes, the demos in question were hand-rolled versions meant to illustrate what per-eye rendering could do.

hmm

Right, but the point here is that’s not reflective of what the VR content will be. The recommended card is a 970, so devs have to orient their perf target and content (assets, filtering, effects, etc) for that hardware. If a 970 is able to deliver the target experience, then where does the 2x, 3x, 4x, etc performance surplus from a 980ti, 980ti SLI, Pascal, etc get spent? A great example is Eve Valkyrie – right now my 970 is enough to run that game on the max settings and achieve a smooth experience. Last I saw, CCP hasn’t even decided yet if they’re going to make oversampling (via UE4’s HMD SP setting) available.

Dedicated VR content through a curated store is a very different world than what we’re used to with PC gaming. Even though the common target experience for a PC game is maybe 30-60fps @ 1080p, the PC platform has the luxury of being adequately functional anywhere between 20-165fps and 720p-2160p (or multi-monitor), allowing for a very high ceiling to make use of whatever abundance of horsepower a user may have. That’s all gone in VR. Content either runs at 90hz with the default render target or it doesn’t, so aside from cranking up the render target size, devs are going to have to go out of their way (spend money) to redesign their content if users expect to see *any* difference between, say, a single 980ti and whatever HBM-Big-Pascal SLI system might exist a year from now.

This of course doesn’t factor in regular PC titles that manage to build in VR compatibility, in which case we’re going back to the normal PC system recommendations model of ‘your mileage may vary’ and buyer-beware. But outside the hardcore sim crowd, I don’t expect this slice of the market to grow very much due to how niche VR is going to remain for the next couple years, and how much work is involved to integrate a well functioning VR user experience to a non-VR title.

Joel Hruska

“If a 970 is able to deliver the target experience, then where does the 2x, 3x, 4x, etc performance surplus from a 980ti, 980ti SLI, Pascal, etc get spent? A great example is Eve Valkyrie – right now my 970 is enough to run that game on the max settings and achieve a smooth experience. Last I saw, CCP hasn’t even decided yet if they’re going to make oversampling (via UE4’s HMD SP setting) available.”

This is part of my point. I’ve never, ever experienced the Rift on a GTX 970. I’ve experienced it on a GTX 980 Ti, or a Titan X, or a Fury X. In the earlier days I saw it on an R9 290X, but that was back in 2013 with very different demos and hardware.

I know that Oculus intends to curate the store. I haven’t yet seen the results of that curation, or if they can keep up with content demands once the platform launches. I know Oculus has set a GTX 970 to be the target spec. I haven’t seen how robust that spec is on the final hardware (or seen the GTX 970 at all). The *platform* isn’t just the Rift — it’s the Rift, the Oculus Store, and the company’s relationships with developers and customers.

The point of recommending people wait-and-see and avoid pre-ordering is precisely because there are questions on these issues. And while I agree that Oculus has done a lot of polishing on their designs, there’s a difference between prototyping a handful of units and getting large volume orders at minimal defect levels. There’s a difference between curating and testing content for a small app store in pre-launch and a full-fledged app distribution platform. There’s a difference between guaranteeing performance on a hypothetical PC platform and then trying to troubleshoot the whacky bugs that can crop up on the full spread of technically compatible PC *hardware.*

EDIT: “handful” of units is relative. Obviously Oculus is now in full production of their Gen 1 hardware, but shipping and distributing the many thousands of headsets Palmer Luckey wants to ship this year is different from shipping the earlier dev kits. Consumers buying finished product will expect higher production values, etc.

None of these are full-bore blow-up-the-Rift issues. Every single one of them can be fixed if they occur. But given that even a GTX 970 + Rift = $930 or so, I don’t think it’s odd to recommend people wait and see what the numbers look like.

hmm

‘Wait and see’ is always a safe bet. It’s basically saying, ‘More information is better than less information.’ But your post points a finger at the fact that trade show tech demos and alpha/beta builds of games are not conforming to Oculus’s spec, and using that as fuel to stir up added concern, and I think that’s entirely unwarranted.

Yes of course, having an abundance of horsepower is always better because it provides headroom/insurance/peace-of-mind at the very least, but that goes without saying whether you’re shopping for PC hardware or really any consumer good. The base spec of a 970 is going to be good enough to run content or the content won’t be on the store, it’s really that simple. The speculative part of this isn’t about whether the 970 will be good enough, it’s about how much value you would get from having substantially more than a 970.

Joel Hruska

“The base spec of a 970 is going to be good enough to run content or the content won’t be on the store, it’s really that simple.”

In theory, yes, that’s how this will work. In practice, no company has managed to find a practical approach to content curation and verification. Even companies like Microsoft and Sony have allowed games to run on the XBox One and PS4 that offered very poor performance, at least at first.

Validation and verification of performance takes time. You need dedicated staff (a lot of them), or you need to allow companies to perform self-certification against a list of criteria you provide. Checking to make sure they did it properly *also* takes time. I have no doubt that Oculus is committed to doing this properly, but I also know that you can’t just handwave it. And however Oculus chooses to perform this curation, if the app store explodes, they’ll be swamped in validation work.

“The speculative part of this isn’t about whether the 970 will be good enough, it’s about how much value you would get from having substantially more than a 970.”

I have not seen Oculus launch titles running on final hardware using a GTX 970. Neither have any of the press or analysts I talked to before writing that section.

Yes, Oculus wants to do things right. But you know what? “Good enough” is a slippery context, especially in a brand-new field like VR. I do not know how good Oculus’ ‘good enough’ is.

You are correct that part of the speculative question is whether or not a better GPU gives you a substantial boost over and above a GTX 970 and where the sweet spot is.

Mike

Over 175,000 dev kits were sold, tried and tested by both developers and consumers. I think that counts as more than a handful.

noahwayne0

I’d figure most people learned their lesson with the Xbox One. Those who bought it at launch vs those who bought just over a year later when microsoft is frantically giving away games with the system at a much reduced price point, the UI is improved, kinetic is gone, etc, etc.

Never be the first to buy a product. Its mostly a sucker deal. Wait a year, let some other sucker be a guinea pig and suffer the setbacks and bugs.

xcxv

I play wii/gamecube/psp games in VR on my DK2, be jealous

Jack Faust

Why didnt the author use the actual Oculus Rift PR render? I cant even find what headset is in the header. While I agree with the subject matter (I pre-ordered because I’m a fanboy and understand the risks) that for most people, ‘If you have to ask, then its not for you’, you could at least show you know what you’re talking about.

Joel Hruska

Because we’ve used the pre-renders. A lot. They get boring. We’ve used this image, too. It also gets boring. Right now, there’s not a lot of variety.

Jack Faust

That’s fair, but out of curiosity what headset is that? Its no version of the Rift I’ve seen, and also not the Vive (Which im assuming people should also not pre-order)

Joel Hruska

*checks*

It’s labeled in the CMS content engine as “Oculus Rift.”

When I feed it through Google, it shows up as “Oculus VR.”

I cannot find a single source for it; it appears fairly popular and is often used in VR stories. I assumed it was a mock-up or stylized iteration on one of the headset designs with some art added to the lenses.

And no, people shouldn’t order the Vive. I haven’t dug as deep into it (only used it once), but I should look at that situation, too.

VirtualMark

Sod this. I’ll do my own article:

Reasons to buy an Occulus Rift ASAP…

It’s frickin VR!!! I have been waiting for decades for this moment.

Felix

Here’s why I disagree: the waiting list already is in July last time I checked. You pay absolutely nothing for getting on the preorder queue. If you preorder now, by the time your turn is up you will have seen around 3-4 months of hardware being played with, more info on new cards will have surfaced, and you can decide to cancel at any point in time.

You lose nothing by preordering, what’s the disadvantage? If you had to pay for the preorder I would agree with you, but that’s not the case. You are just saving your spot in case it’s good but have the option to back out in case it’s not at no cost to you.

polysix

I agree. Get the Vive and have a proper VR system from day one instead of playing Facebook’s game of BS!

REP

Do you know how much is Pascal? It’s going to be insanely expensive. Sure, you always want the best, upgrade the best but the price is a huge problem. You might as well get 980ti and play it for a couple years before upgrading to Pascal because by that time, the price would have dropped drastically. If you can afford Pascal, sure why not. But not everyone has that kind of money and so that’s why Oculus is rolling out 970 as the minimum. 980ti is more than enough for VR and will last awhile.

Joel Hruska

“Do you know how much is Pascal? It’s going to be insanely expensive”

Source?

Nvidia will introduce a variety of Pascal GPUs at a range of prices and SKUs, just like always. They will almost certainly introduce Pascal at a $350 – $550 price point to refresh both the GTX 970 and GTX 980 Ti.

Sweetie

Hopefully it won’t be sold on fraud like the 970.

“Its memory configuration is best described as 3.5GB+512MB”

No, it’s best described as 3.5 GB of VRM and 512 MB of useless.

28 GB/s and XOR contention is not real VRM, in contrast with your description.

Robert Jenkins

im going to have to disagree all around. You can wait for better gpus…but guess what…better gpu’s are ALWAYS COMING…there will be new ones to drop in 2017 and 2018. there are new gpu’s every year. You’ll be waiting forever. Also the rift is pretty well proven since the dk1. If you don’t agree thats fine but if we wait…it will never be proven. It also won’t have the funding necessary for a second product cycle or let alone a price drop. Hardware issues are not too much to worry about. I first played a rift on a pc with an old gtx in it. It was maybe a 760 in the dk1. So at higher resolution you might need something modern but you should play just fine on modern hardware with a single card. The recommended specs are to make sure u have at least 90fps. Anyway i’m not going to be part of the “waiters” crowd. Those people are the reason price drops dont happen as well as failed products that were actualy good.

Joel Hruska

“better gpu’s are ALWAYS COMING”

Factually true, but irrelevant in this case.The 28nm to 14nm shift should be quite significant for both AMD and Nvidia — moreso than the refreshes we saw last time around.

torjs99

hey! shut up! i have to off load my free kickstarter one on ebay!

Kraufthauser

Wut?? I have been waiting for VR to happen for whole my life and now you are telling me I shouldn’t order? And miss out on all the fun. sorry, not gonna happen :-)

torjs99

i know. even the first gen oculus was amazing. haters gotta hate

John Miller

Get vorpx and you can play fallout 4, grand theft auto, and on and on

Joel Hruska

I find it hilarious that you classify me as a “hater” when I’ve written multiple articles for this site about how amazing VR can be, and state, in this piece, that I believe it can be a revolutionary technology.

I mean, seriously. Did you *read* the story?

Joel Hruska

*Pre-order.* Not order.

John Miller

I played grand theft auto v and dishonered in VR last night its ready for primetime

Noj

All in all, I don’t expect a lot to change as far as the headset is concerned. How well each gfx card can keep up with what’s needed is the real question. So I don’t see why u should wait on the headset. I’m a nvidia owner, and am really concerned with their lack of response to everything dx12 regarding support for async, the delays for all dx12 patches,which I believe to be directly related. Personally I think P
ascal isnt even coming and nvidia is scrapping a solution together right now. I would buy a furyX right now, but with Genesis coming soon and Polaris, best to wait for a price drop. Either way get the rift or vive. Use it the settings U can and wait and see for gfx cards

Katana Man

One would think that with dx12 and vulkan that the rift can only get better performance in the future.

Superkev

I disagree with this author. This is already the 4th+ (there were some sub units in there too) unit from OVR (dk1, dk2, cb, cv1) so these things have been evolving for years. There are already many driver optimizations for vr hardware from nv and amd. It’s like we are starting at a version 2.5 ish sort of thing. My dk2 is actually worth more than i paid for it on ebay and I can sell my 290x and only lose $80 from what I paid. I’ve already been happy with the dk2 so i can’t imagine being *less happy with the cv1 and an upgraded gpu when they are released. Not a lot of risk there really as if I really wanted out I could sell the stuff easily (as there will be a backlog of shipments).

Brian Leupold

Here’s the bottom line. If you love the DK1, DK2, have been passionate about VR from the starting gate, of course you want to be flying through the metaverse with Oculus consumer version ASAP. I have been developing VR experiences and working with quadriplegics and very sick children using.this awesome technology , I spent several grand for a portable solution as packing my tower around daily was.getting.old. I know my.laptop will be outdsted soon but I.will be there.watching.kids and paralysed Veterans enjoy.something simply.put, awesome. So.in the end it’s more about your priorities, is there a compelling argument to hold.off.awhile? Yes, we know it will only get better and less expensive, but if you are as excited as I.am, well we have been waiting, I.have been.waiting since.I saw Brainstorm., or. LAWNMOWER MAN, VR has come a long way and this historic launch is only.the tip of the iceberg, we have an amazing year.ahead, & I hope to see all of you in the metaverse.
Please visit VRSMILE.COM to read about how a quadriplegic 23 yr old crossed paths.with.virtual reality.and changed his life

alfrhed

except you can always wait for the next tech. Based on the article it sounds like the author hasn’t even experienced the Rift yet which makes this whole opinion next to worthless.

Mahmet Tokarev (Tajik Pride)

I’ve decided I’ll wait another year at least before I buy a headset, since I want to check out Vive first anyway. My guess is VR will experience a similar rapid cost decline in the first 2 years and then decline more gradually (like we’ve seen in monitors and computers generally.)

Remember how the iPhone’s cost was cut by 200 bucks within 6 months of its launch? I’m hoping the $600 price is a gambit to soak the most enthusiastic fans, and the cost will reach something reasonable rather quickly.

Sweetie

Yeah. The rule is not “don’t buy gen 1”. The rule is “don’t buy gen 1 until it has been discounted”. Although, when it comes to Apple, the first rule does apply because it is the master of planned obsolescence to waste people’s money with fast orphaning (cough cough iPad 1).

Greg Lindstrom

looks like my 980ti sli can run it fine. zzz need more usb ports. Doesnt seem too expensive same price as a cheap 4k monitor?

John DeWispelaere

Great article, I agree with everything . Let’s wait ten years to try the oculus rift out.

FloridaOJ

I feel bad for the author of this article.

He wrote this as a “save yourself from potential disappointment” piece. Potential being the key word. He didn’t say it’s horrible or that it won’t be successful. He’s saying none of us are psychics or prophets. This “could” be the next HD-DVD… and the VIVE could be the BLU-RAY. We don’t know yet. He’s saying chill out, unless you just have cash to blow on a ‘maybe’.

I personally believe that both platforms may coexist long term… but that is a ‘belief’ not knowledge.

Open your feeble little minds and stop raging over an opinion piece.

FloridaOJ

Now that I think about it… The comment section would be pretty dull and seem fairly academic if everyone immediately resorted to reason.

it only takes a little bit more than a month to get your rift now if you order one today. They really sorted this problem so no need to worry about this anymore. it’s old news.

State of Psychosis

gtx 970’s have been dropping in price since the newest one came out so it’s a good time to get an Oculus. By the time you’ll need a better GPU than that, they’ll be cheaper too like the 980 and 980 ti so I totally disagree with the article.

ExtremeTech Newsletter

Subscribe Today to get the latest ExtremeTech news delivered right to your inbox.

Use of this site is governed by our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Copyright 1996-2016 Ziff Davis, LLC.PCMag Digital Group All Rights Reserved. ExtremeTech is a registered trademark of Ziff Davis, LLC. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff Davis, LLC. is prohibited.